Lost in translation

By ohhhman - 10/04/2009 00:13 - United States

Today, one of the Haitians that works in the kitchen at my restaurant said something to me. Usually I can't understand them and I just smile and laugh, so that's what I did this time. Later, I found out he was trying to tell me his father had passed away. FML
I agree, your life sucks 19 702
You deserved it 58 250

Same thing different taste

Top comments

Bummer. Maybe you should try to understand them better or just be honest and say, "I'm sorry but I just can't understand you; I'm so bad with accents."

i don't care how many times i gotta look stupid repeatedly going "pardon? pardon?" i still gotta know EXACTLY what someone is trying to tell me.

Comments

You're a jerk. What's so bad about saying "Pardon? I didn't catch that." Nothing.

#30 You have probably not ever bothered to learn a second language then (and no, a few phrases you learned in high school Spanish doesn't count), it's harder than you think and I'm sure they are trying to learn. Don't go around saying ignorant things like that when you don't know what you're talking about, you're making the rest of us Americans look bad.

laughs2loud 0

first off. number 15 you're a jerk. and number 53 .. the town i live in has tons of hispanics.. and we speak english ..

no i totally know where you're coming from. i have an uncle that's Haitian that i've known for pretty much my whole life and i still need to ask him what he said 3 and 4 times before i understand. more often than not they get offended before you can figure out what they're saying. i say it's not your fault that they didn't learn English better

franny625 0

hahahahaha...that's so funny...don't worry your not ignorant at all...nobody is in this situation...just make you sure you understand what he says...

ayumi_fml 0

I totally feel for you. My whole family is from Haiti and half the time, I don't know what the hell they're saying... =X

i_am_the_shizz 0
Oriina 0

I can't say you deserve it, because some accents are /very/ hard to understand, despite how well the person learnst o speak English. BUT. You need to /tell/ them that you can't understand them and since saying "what" all the times is cumbersome (which I have to do with my husband's Russian family members ... damn accents) tell them to write it down because you can't understand them. How couldn't you gather that he wasn't joking by a probable saddend look on his face?

I get what you did, it's not being ignorant since you didn't want to keep on asking "What?" every dozen times for a single word. Don't let it get to you since it's not your fault.